Who: Neil and Sam What: Neil is drunk, Sam is high, things happen. (Part 1) Where: Neil's place. When: Recentishly. Warnings/Rating: None.
Sam hadn't know what to expect from her outing with MK, but she was flying high as a fucking kite once it was over. Even her conversations on the journals (she was digging this phone = journal thing) on the way back to Aria hadn't touched her good mood. Sure, it had made it clear that things in teenageville were a little more complicated than anticipated, but the coke still had her on the best fucking high, and nothing seemed insurmountable just then. She had trouble staying still in the back of the car, and the driver kept eying her in the rearview, and even that didn't freak her out. This was precisely why she didn't do coke on a regular basis. It was just too fucking good, and it was a lucky thing she didn't have an addictive personality when it came to this stuff, or she'd be in trouble. She'd always been fine using socially, and her recent upswing in drugs was all about not being afraid, not about getting blazed; totally different thing.
The only thing that had affected her high a little was the shit Flash had said about MK slitting her wrists. That was a fucking problem, but the redhead was through the door and being taken care of, and Sam let it go. Tomorrow. She would worry about that shit tomorrow.
The good thing about coke was that she could still manage a pretty straight line through the lobby of the hotel, and any heavy leaning against the hallway walls on the way to the penthouse had to do with being lethargic, not with the drunken sway that normally accompanied her return from bars. She let herself into the suite, and she peeled her jacket off just inside the door. The red, skinny jeans went next, along with her heels, and by the time she made it up the dizzying staircase to the rooms upstairs, she was only wearing the black, open-backed camisole and a pair of black boyshorts. Her blonde hair was a mess, and she smelled like cigarette smoke and beer. Her lips had long since lost their vibrant red, and only the liner was left behind, along with the khol that lined her eyes.
She remembered, vaguely, that Neil was fucked up too, and she remembered why a few seconds later. "Baby?" she called out, telling herself she would resist any temptations from the fucking aphrodisiac in order to listen to whatever was bothering Mr. Emotionally Unavailable.
Neil had begun drinking because Christine was gone, and Erik was bound to be a depressed disaster who might throw himself off a building the next time he crossed through, with a little irritation at Sam and Liam thrown in, but he’d kept up as long as he had because of the fucking insanity that decided to kick out the Phantom and move in permanently. If he had to deal with two voices all the time, he was going to go insane himself, or at least start developing a drinking problem to deal with it. The problem was, though, that a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of wine didn’t quite get rid of the voices. Oh, they dulled them, and sent him right over the line between drunk and completely fucked up, but Normie and his little creepy friend were still there, and they sure as hell didn’t give any indication of going away or shutting up in the near future.
He knew, vaguely, that Sam was coming later, after she was going... somewhere, with... someone, but he kept on drinking until the room started spinning too much for his liking, and he somehow managed to crawl up the stairs to his bedroom, or at least he thought it was his bedroom; whatever. It had a bed, which he climbed up on after a good fifteen minutes of pulling sheets every which way and falling over countless times, and that was the important part. Beds were good. Comfortable, and he’d brought a bottle of beer with him, not that he needed any more booze in his system. His head felt fuzzy, and his vision kept blurring and refocusing in a very annoying manner every few seconds, but he was warm and had a pleasant sort of buzz in the pit of his stomach, which made up for the killer hangover he was going to have the next morning. Or it did right then, at least, when he couldn’t feel much at all.
At some point, he might have passed out; he wasn’t sure. Either way, awake or not, Neil didn’t hear Sam come in at all, and the only thing that alerted him to her presence was the far-off sound of her voice. He frowned, struggling to push himself up against the headboard, and took a swig of beer. Someone was in the apartment. Huh. Or he was hallucinating, but no, he didn’t think that was it. Wasn’t somebody supposed to come-- somebody he couldn’t remember. Oops. “Party’s in here,” he called back to whoever it was, his voice very, very slurred, which didn’t make understanding him easy, especially with his accent. “C’mon in.”
That greeting - strange and slurred and nearly unintelligible - made Sam stop on the landing for just a second. Then she moved forward, again, hand on the wall for balance. The benzos evened out the cocaine high, making her calm in her euphoria. She might have panicked otherwise, because she'd never heard Neil sound that wasted, and that was saying something, given how often she and Neil got drunk around one another. The teenager in her head made a small, soft sound of disapproval, and Sam rolled her eyes. "Oh, fuck you. Don't even start." She missed Christine, and she wasn't in the mood for a lecture from a kid that was three years younger than her.
The hallway seemed endless, but Sam made it to Neil's door eventually, and she turned the knob and shoved it open, almost half expecting to find some fucked up orgy inside.
But nope, no orgy, and damn the room was dark. She found the light switch on the wall, and she used the dimmer immediately to spare her blown-wide pupils. She didn't move from the doorway right away, taking in the bottle, the messiness of the bed, and the half slump that resulted from that struggle with the headboard. Oh, yeah, he was fucking wasted, and that beer bottle in his hand sure hadn't done it.
If Sam had been less fucked up herself, she might have thought to get him into a cold bath. But, yeah, no, not right away, anyway. Instead, she pushed away from the door and she crawled onto the foot of the bed and then up to the headboard. Her bare knee pressed against the inside of his thigh as she knelt in front of him, and she stole his beer bottle and took a long chug, beer trailing down her chin and neck as she righted the bottle again. "Get started without me, baby?" she asked, but there was a lingering concern in her eyes that said she hadn't forgotten that there was a fucking problem. She was just giving him a chance to babble at her about it first, of his own volition, without her trying to get it out of him.
Oh, there was sure as hell no orgy going on here. Neil was far too comfortable on the bed to think of moving, not to mention too drunk to really comprehend what was going on, even as he lifted his head at whoever had opened the door. Part of his mind knew it was Sam, but it was a quiet, dusty part, and he waited for the lights to come on instead of putting himself through the exhausting, painful process of thinking. He winced at the harsh brightness, though it only lasted a moment, and he blinked in relief when the lights dimmed. The beer bottle in his hand was all but forgotten as he watched Sam crawl towards him, recognition sliding into place with a sense of drunken satisfaction.
"Hi," he slurred with a smile, and it took a long couple of moments for him to realize that she'd taken his beer bottle, looking from his now empty hand to her before it clicked. "Hey, that's mine," he pouted, but he was already too drunk to care. "Didn't wanna wait. Head hurts n' I couldn't wait f'you. Did you have fun with... with... whoever?" He waved a hand, unable to piece together who Sam had been with or even where they'd gone. Somewhere, he knew that much.
She leaned past him to put the beer bottle on the nightstand, and then she righted again. Kneeling like she was, she had height on him, and she looked down at him and tried to think through the fucking euphoria of the coke. But it was hard, man, was it fucking hard. All she wanted to do was have a good time, and he wasn't in any fucking state for a good time. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, and she promised herself a long, hot bath and some time with her hand if she could get through this shit without jumping him. Fucking coke. This wasn't as bad as MK finding out her guy was through the door, but it was close. The teenager in her head lectured, and Sam blew a strand of hair out of her face. "Oh, you shut the fuck up," she told the teenager (and the ceiling). Christine would have tutted; she missed tutting.
"MK," she provided, filling in the name of who she had been with, and she couldn't even blame the drugs for the teasing grin that followed. "And some guy in a bathroom stall." She didn't expect him to get jealous - not Neil, and not drunk, but it was an old habit, trying to rile him into giving a fuck. She slid her thighs over his, straddling his legs as she knelt there, the level of casual (unflinching) contact an indication that she was way more than drunk. "She's kind of fucking crazy," she said of MK, and it was obvious she liked the redhead from the tone of her voice. "She has Mary Jane Watson," she continued, the coke making her talk too much, even as it made her rock against him unthinkingly with a happy purr. "MJ is that hot redhead from the Spider-Man comics, ya know? I have some blonde named Gwen Stacy, who is a total fucking bore," she explained, realizing then that she'd been babbling. "Tell me about the voice, baby," she coaxed.
Neil tipped his head back towards the ceiling, as though there was something there to see, but there wasn’t, and he frowned as he looked back down at her. “Who’re you talkin’ to?” He didn’t hear anyone either, since the voices in his head were duller now, faded thanks to the booze, and even so he doubted she could hear them too. Maybe it was whoever was in her head. Maybe they didn’t shut up either. He had no idea what she was thinking, no idea what she wanted, and he was too drunk to even start trying to figure it out.
“MK,” he repeated, even though the name meant practically nothing to him. “And a guy?” Drunk or not, that struck a chord, even if he couldn’t exactly muster up his usual jealousy. He just didn’t like it, and he frowned, trying to figure out why. “What guy? Thought it was just you an’ her.” Neil was pretty sure that’s how it was supposed to have been, at least. But then again, he could have been wrong, and he waited for her to enlighten him as she straddled his legs. Had he been sober, he would have demanded to know what, exactly, had happened, and what she was on, but there was none of that now. “We’re all fucking crazy,” he slurred. Yeah, damn right, he knew that much. All those names, Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy and even Spider-Man, they were nothing but gibberish to him, except the voices in his head got louder when they were mentioned, and he groaned in protest. “Voice is a pain in the ass. Need more booze. Never heard’f Gwen Stacy.” It was jumbled and disjointed, but at least there was some coherence to his rambling.
She didn't reply to his question about who she was talking, because she'd already moved past it by the time he asked in that slurred accent that managed to be hot even when she couldn't understand half of the shit coming out of his mouth. "Some random guy that offered her some coke," she said of MK and the bathroom stall man. "She's a fucking supermodel, Neil. Red hair, gorgeous, and all the attention in the bar on her ass. And don't you even get excited by that," she told him, high enough not to care about actually being possessive. It's not like he would remember anything in the morning, not this drunk.
That realization was actually kind of fucking liberating. She could say or do anything she wanted, and he would never know. In her fucked up state, that felt like hitting some jackpot, and she had to stare at him for a few minutes to figure out what the fuck he was saying. "Yeah, no, I never heard of her either," she finally said of Gwen Stacy. "She's not important. She gets killed like on page two or something." An exaggeration, sure, but the sentiment was solid. "You don't need more booze, baby. Want some E? It'll perk you up, and it might shut whoever is in your head up." She was really doing a shit job at this cleaning up thing, and she reached past him into the nightstand drawer, where she kept some shit - an indication of how much time she spent in his room while he was at work. She pulled out two stamps, and she slipped one under her tongue, then held the other one out for him to open his mouth. "What does the voice say, baby?" she asked, a hand sliding down his arm as she asked the question. Yeah, so maybe casual contact was ok this once.
“Oh.” Neil frowned again, brow furrowed, trying to fight past the haze of booze to remember why that was a bad thing. Random guys offering girls in bathroom stalls coke was bad, right? Yeah, and he was supposed to be pissed, but he couldn’t muster up enough energy for it. He could be pissed later. That made sense. “What’s her being a supermodel got to do with anythin’? Supermodels get offered coke a lot?” Maybe. Maybe it was a thing. Hell if he knew. “M’not excited,” he protested. “Don’t care.” Please; drunk as he was, all the redheaded supermodels in the world wouldn’t have made a difference, and besides, the redhead wasn’t there just then. She was, and she was very much a solid presence on top of him.
A hint of concern made it through the layers upon layers of alcohol, and he struggled valiantly to sit up for a moment before giving up with a sigh. “Getting killed’s bad, Sam. Dying’s bad. What happens? Gotta stop it.” He started slurring his words again, just as it seemed he might be able to articulate a little better, and he probably would have pushed the issue--or tried--if she hadn’t made her offer just then. Booze was nice, giving him a warm, fuzzy feeling, but clearly it wasn’t enough if the assholes in his head were still audible. Under normal circumstances Neil would have turned her down, flat out, but now he simply considered it for a second or two before nodding. Why the hell not? “Sure,” he agreed. It was probably a good thing that he wouldn’t remember much of this, at least tomorrow, because having that shit in his bedside drawer was enough to make him lose it once he was sober. As it was, he just accepted the stamp with an open mouth, obediently allowing it to be slipped under his tongue, and sighed when she asked what the voice was saying. “Says the girl was annoying,” he began, halting, uncertain. “Says I might be better. Might not be. Got all preachy an’ annoyed once I started drinking. Fucking judgemental. Like my dad but way worse.”
"Supermodels get offered everything," Sam told him, though she thought maybe all that crap wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. She hadn't known MK very long, but MK was fucking miserable - even she could see that. She laughed a warm laugh when he said he didn't care, because she was pretty sure he was too fucked up to care about anything just then. "Yeah, baby? Then what do you care about?" she asked him, and it was a question she might have asked when he was stone-cold sober. Figuring out what made Neil tick was still something she hadn't managed to do, and it drove her fucking crazy.
She watched him struggle to sit up, but she didn't help. She knew he was just going to slump again, and the idea of getting him in a shower reared its head again, but no, the stamp would perk him up some. It would make it hard for her to concentrate, layered over the coke like it was, but it should fuck with the booze in his system enough to give him some kick. Drunken kick, but kick, and she didn't stop to worry if that might be a bad thing. Sure, Neil got pissed sometimes, but he wasn't a violent fuck, and he wasn't randy, so no big. Once the stamp was under his tongue, she let herself lean forward, head against his shoulder and her body pressed against his. This was the kind of shit she never let herself do, but that didn't register just then. "Some old fucker named Norman tosses her off a bridge after she gets with him or something," she explained, and she grinned a gap-tooth smile. "You going to protect me, baby?" she teased, but there wasn't any worry in her voice. She couldn't imagine the nerd in her head having sex with anyone, and that had to cancel out the bridge tossing shit, right? "The girl?" she asked, once the question filtered through. "Is that who he was with before? Yeah, well tell him to fucking stuff it. We have to put up with them, and they have to put up with us."
Neil pondered the prospect of supermodels being offered everything for a moment, the process longer than it should have been in his drunken state, before giving a half shrug in agreement. “Yeah,” he said. “Guess they’re kind of like rich people that way. Which doesn’t make sense, ‘cause we already have everything, so why offer us more? Always stuff money can buy, never stuff it can’t. Never stuff we really want,” he added, slurred and definitely without thinking. It was no secret that he’d grown up not wanting for anything, at least not the necessities, but money couldn’t buy parents who knew how to show their affection, or people who didn’t leave, or a family that didn’t withdraw into themselves and pretend everything was fine when things got rough. As for what he cared about, that was a tricky question when he was sober, never mind when he was drunk, and he just stared, his mind struggling to put together some sort of cohesive response. “Care about lots’f stuff,” he said finally. “People. Family. You.” Judging by his lack of reaction, he probably hadn’t realized that last one slipped out; the line between what was said in his head and what was said aloud was definitely blurry just then.
Taking the stamp had likely been a very, very bad idea, but he didn’t realize that, and he didn’t dwell on it either. He closed his eyes when she leaned against him, and while it would have been tempting to stay like that a few minutes ago, now he didn’t find himself as tired, and he opened them again when she started talking. Norman... Norman... why did that sound familiar? What the voices were saying, specifically, had all blurred together into a mess of nonsense, but when Neil prepared to say something, even just an indication of familiarity, his vision swam before his eyes and a wave of nausea washed over him. Not so fast, slick, one of the voices hissed, the manic-sounding one, like a bad comic book villain. You watch our backs, and we’ll watch yours. That’s how it’s gonna work. “Oh,” he managed, distantly cataloging a feeling of disdain towards the prospect of this Gwen ‘getting with’ Norman. “Sucks for her.” He let out a long breath and managed to keep his head up this time, still very much drunk, but more alert than before. “Yeah, ‘course I’ll protect you.” As for telling the voice to stuff it, that elicited a laugh, though it was distinctly lacking in humor. “Won’t listen,” he explained. “Doesn’t like being told what to do.” He’d figured that much out already.
"Everyone wants more, baby," Sam said, once she got the gist of those Scot-slurred words. "If you gave the poorest bitch on the planet something, they'd want more a second later. Why would rich people be any different? Maybe they just want different things, once they figure out money won't make them perfectly happy. Us bitches? We still think a million dollars would solve all our fucking problems," she explained, letting her calloused fingers drag along the underside of his chin as she curled closer, the touch sure and rough and nothing tentative. He was warm, and he was solid, and cuddling up to him was definitely off the table under normal circumstances. But these weren't normal circumstances, and that stamp was already making everything in the room seem fucking bright and interesting, and it made him seem almost addictively present. "So, what do you really want?" she asked, the question an absent one; she didn't actually expect him to fucking tell her. As for him caring about her? Yeah, she actually did know that part. She wouldn't be there, taking up his space and eating up his food if he didn't think of her as an extension of Louis or some shit.
"She'll be fine," Sam said dismissively of Gwen. Unlike Christine, who Sam had felt needed to be handled with kid gloves, Gwen was (in Sam's opinion) pretty fucking resilient. Doomed ending or not, the girl seemed to be holding her own in a situation which was kind of ass. "She's a strong little fuck, even if she doesn't know it yet, and she's all cozy with the son of the fucker who's supposed to off her. Plus, it's Loki's door, and she's befriended a big green bitch. I think she's stacking the odds up in her favor." She didn't like how little Neil was telling her about whoever was in his head, though, and she frowned as he explained that the voice wouldn't listen. Neil was too fucking easy-going to deal with a real asshole in his mind, and Sam knew that better than most people. Erik hadn't been a bitch, despite what everyone thought. He'd been a little obsessed, sure, but he didn't want world domination or to kill people for kicks; Neil hadn't actually had to control him very much, not as far as Sam could tell. But if he ended up with someone really fucked up. "Hey, listen, baby," she said, sitting back and trying to get his attention, trying to focus on something other than that loss of tactile heat and the overwhelming desire from the stamp to do something instead of just sitting there. "Tell him we'll leave him alone, and we'll let him do whatever the fuck he wants through the door, if he just leaves you alone here. It'll be a deal, ok?" And yeah, there had been a we there, but she didn't even notice it.
Like hell if he knew. Neil was bad enough at proper conversation when he was sober, never mind when he was drunk, and he couldn’t put together a coherent explanation for why the rich would want more than what they already had. Maybe it was because the more you had, the more you realized it was all insignificant, and no amount of money or objects could fix loneliness or problems that went beyond skin deep. “Maybe,” he agreed. “A million dollars can fix a lot, but not everything. Doesn’t make people love you,” he slurred, and maybe that wasn’t fair, because his parents had loved him in their own way, but it was hard to believe in something you had no proof of. It was like having faith, like what religious people had; he’d never understood it. The sheer amount of alcohol in his system would have made her touch feel like something far-away and distant, but the stamp heightened things, sharpened them, and the feel of her fingers along the underside of his chin was like electricity playing along his skin. He sighed at the sensation, contented, and almost forgot to respond to her absently asked question, though his answer was just as absent. “Don’t know. Maybe that’s what I really want, to know what I want.” Fuck, logic like that made his head hurt.
Cozy indeed, the voice in his head hissed, but he shook it off, away, not wanting to listen. “Loki’s door,” he repeated, only a hint of understanding creeping through. Maybe it would work in Gwen’s favor, but there were others, others to target, and Neil knew that the guy in his head chatting it up with Loki was a very, very bad thing. “Yeah, right. Louis. What big green bitch?” The description made him laugh, a thick, drunken sound, even if it came with a faint thread of irritation from the back of his mind. Controlling Norman and his crazy alter-ego was something he’d tried not to think about, because he didn’t think he could do it, not really, not if the guy put up a real fight. Erik had never really fought for control, but when he had, it had never been easy. Maybe the fact that he’d sympathized with him had exacerbated that, though. He sure as hell didn’t sympathize with this guy. That might make a difference. “Don’t think he cares what I do here,” he said, trying to focus on her when she sat back. “Not really. S’long as it doesn’t affect him. He might bitch, but I can handle that. Don’t think I could stop him from doing what he wants through his door even if I tried, and if I did, it’d piss him off,” he attempted to explain.
Some part of her mind registered that contented sigh, and it interpreted it as permission, agreement, whatever the fuck else meant yes. It was easier to focus on that than on what he'd said about money not making people love someone. Love wasn't something that got discussed in her house as a kid. Tessy was closer to a mom than her own mom was, and even Tessy's affection wasn't the kind that came with labels or declarations. No, her older sister was all band-aids on scraped knees and a joint when Sam came home crying. "Yeah, poor people don't have that love thing all that much better," she said truthfully, though she wasn't nearly fucked up enough (or fucked up in the right way) to make the words easy to say. "Maybe because it has fuck-all to do with cash, baby." And he'd loved someone once, hadn't he? He knew what it was like. She'd never been there, until now, and she wasn't willing to muse on that shit. No way, not when the world was technicolor bright and nothing hurt. "I'd pay good money to know what you wanted," she added without thinking, and she followed it up with a smirk, a cover to the sentiment that had seeped into her voice when she wasn't looking. "It would be your fucking money, though."
"The Hulk, and how fucking ridiculous does that sound," she said of Gwen's green friend. "Plus there's Spider-Man, and her current best friend has some alien in his brain or something. Seriously, we don't have to worry about my little blonde pain-in-the-ass," she assured him, even as he laughed that strange laugh. "Well, he's driving you to fucking drink now, isn't he? That's considered fucking with you. He stops that shit, or you don't go through the door. Simple. I'll lock you in the fucking closet, and then he'll be fucked," she said, some determination making it through the haze. It was short-lived, that fire, but it was there. Fuck this. They'd had enough crap from people through the doors. They deserved a fucking break. Not that she expected they would get one. He was keeping shit from her, and Gwen was a meddler, and none of this felt like it was going to be a cakewalk. But mixed with all that worry was the swirl of the drugs, and the space between them felt like miles. And fuck that. Fuck miles. She rocked forward again, a moan on her lips, and her hands slid to the center of his chest, pressing through fabric and using him to keep from teetering as she rocked against him. "We're going to be fine," she assured him, as if she had any control over that whatsoever. Her hand slid up, over his chest, throat, chin, and her fingers slid past his lips, rough and calloused and nothing gentle.
“Guess it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor,” he sighed. Hell if he knew how to make someone love him, whether it was his parents or another woman. As for Sam, well, Neil wasn’t self-deluded enough to think she had feelings for him aside from some semblance of fondness, like that of a friend for a friend. “Money can buy a hell of a lot, but not everything, and either we’ve got too much or too little. No balance,” he slurred. He didn’t need half the money he had, and neither did his family. Oh, it was nice not having to worry, to know that no matter what, things would always be secure, but what good was all of that when he ended up alone and surrounded by bottles of expensive alcohol in his ridiculously overpriced suite? “You ever loved somebody and didn’t know how to make ‘em love you back?” He might have been referring to the girl from his past, or maybe he was referring to her, and it was more of an absently asked question rather than one he truly expected to be answered. As for her paying good money to know what he wanted, he laughed, a drunken sound not at all concerned with whatever lay behind the question. “So would I. Too bad my money can’t buy answers.”
Comic books had never been his strong suit, or anything he paid much attention to whatsoever, so the Hulk only rang a faint bell of familiarity, associated with Louis’ door and some movie that had come out awhile ago. “The Hulk and Spider-Man... who the hell comes up with these names?” Neil rolled his eyes as one of the voices started singing that stupid little song about the itsy bitsy spider, doing his best to ignore the unsettling rendition, and tried to convince himself that this Gwen girl would be fine through the door. “Yeah, alright,” he agreed, but it was uncertain, and laced with an alcohol-induced desire to avoid arguing. He started shaking his head when she mentioned locking him in the closet, or keeping him from going through the door, because she didn’t know, didn’t understand; they were the ones who’d be fucked in the end. “Can’t shut him up. S’fine. I’ll get used to it,” he said, and maybe he shouldn’t have been so passive, but he didn’t feel up to a struggle with the man in his head and his crazy companion; didn’t feel up to it at all. Maybe later, when he sobered up, that might change, but it wasn’t going to happen while he was like this. His breath caught in his throat when she rocked against him, and there was confusion in his gaze as he looked up at her, as though he was just catching up to what was going on, and the fact that it felt good. “Okay,” he repeated, as her fingers slid past his lips, and his hands moved to find her hips. “We’ll be fine.” If she believed it, that had to mean something, right?
Sam thought it was easy for him to say that money didn't matter, because he'd never gone fucking hungry, and he'd never had to steal to keep a roof over his head in winter. But that wasn't his fault, the fact that he didn't get it, and she wasn't going to hold it against him. She didn't have that kind of anger at the upper-class, and she'd never actually felt like the fuckers owed her anything. Sure, she hated being looked down on, but that wasn't about money; that was just her. But, yeah, he didn't get it, and that cluelessness was actually a little endearing. Any other guy would have called her out as a fortune hunter months ago, but Neil left his money and cards around, didn't care what the fuck she spent, and never cared when she asked for expensive shit. But she wasn't actually there for his money, she just wasn't going to keep from enjoying it if she had access, because she wasn't that fucking stupid. His question about whether or not she'd ever loved someone without knowing how to make them love her back made her laugh, because wasn't that rich? Because, oh, yeah, she'd already figured out she was in love with this fucker, even if she knew nothing was ever going to come of it. She'd figured it out at that useless party, but it wasn't like she really needed the wake-up call. Knowing and pretending she didn't know were pretty much the same thing. "Oh, yeah, baby," she said. "I know exactly what that's like," she said, assuming he was talking about that chick in college. "I don't think it's something you can change. Can't make someone love you." She shook her head, remembering her conversation with MK. "Can't make someone love you who doesn't know how," she added, not a hint of teasing in her expression.
"Bored nerds that don't get laid," was her response to who came up with comic book hero names, and she attributed him rolling his eyes to the stupid names, not to anything going on in his head. She should be more concerned about that, about whatever was going on in his mind, but the drugs made it hard to worry about anything. Coke just made everything great - horny, but great, and the E, man, the E made the world fucking shine. A flicker of worry managed to filter through when he said the guy in his head wouldn't shut up, but it didn't stick. She was too accustomed to Neil being passive, because Neil was passive about everything. She met his gaze when his breath caught, her fingers stilling between his lips, and she caught the confusion in his gaze as his hands found her hips. She thought he might have agreed to something she'd said, but she couldn't remember, because that confusion made her realize what she was doing, and fuck if confusion looked anything like desire. She groaned, and she climbed off him and flopped onto her back beside him. No more fucking coke. It made her act desperate, she decided, and her cheeks were a shade of red she was hoping he wouldn't notice in the dark. But that wasn't his fault, right? Her not being his thing, and she should have gotten the message loud and clear the last time they'd gone out. She had to blink a few times (which she completely blamed on the fucking drugs), and then she tugged on his hand. "Come on, baby. Lie down and get some rest." She could take a cold fucking shower once he was asleep.